


Eyes Tight Closed

by prouvairablehulk



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Series Redo, Time Travel, tags to be added as the story progresses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2017-09-22
Packaged: 2019-01-03 23:48:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12157287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prouvairablehulk/pseuds/prouvairablehulk
Summary: “Good luck, Mister Silver.” she says, and the world is thrown into a spin that leaves John staggering.Staggering, on two perfectly healthy legs. On a ship. In a cabin on a ship that has a bolted door. Currently inhabited by a very nervous looking man who John knows from experience has a page in his shirt that will make John very important to a very large number of people.(In which John Silver gets a chance to redo his life, and somehow just manages to make everything more complicated)





	Eyes Tight Closed

John Silver closes his eyes against a fever haze brought on by a fresh infection in his leg, and opens his eyes onto a flat plain of black, as far as he can see. 

“So, you’re Long John Silver.” 

When he turns to see who’s spoken, he’s faced with a young woman in a severe black dress that reminds him of nothing more that a schoolmistress, a white streak bright in her otherwise dark hair, running from her temple backwards. Sitting on her shoulder is a skeletal rat in a hooded robe, carrying a rat-sized scythe. 

SQUEAK says the rat. 

“Yes, he is smaller than I was imagining.” replies the young woman. 

SQUEAK says the rat. 

The woman cocks her eyebrow, and reaches into her pocket, drawing out a heavy-looking brass hourglass. 

“Who are you?” asks John. 

“My name is Susan.” says the woman. She’s peering intently at the hourglass, rather than at John, and while it’s certainly dismissive John can’t help but feel like there’s somebody watching him just as intently. 

“Am I hallucinating, or am I just dead?” asks John, because he’d been running a fever and he honestly wasn’t sure. 

“The latter.” says Susan. “And before you ask, I’m filling in temporarily. Grandfather is - otherwise occupied.” 

SQUEAK says the rat. 

“Hush, you, it was your idea to have a second look. This is - “ 

Susan shoots John an apologetic look.

“You had a fairly terrible life, didn’t you?” 

John shrugs. 

“There’s some things I’ve considered changing. I think I made the best of it.”

Susan looks appalled. John feels about seven again under the weight of her stare. 

“You think you made the best of it.” she says. 

SQUEAK says the rat. Somehow, it sounds disapproving. 

“I wasn’t going to -” starts Susan. The rat manages to shoot her a look without eyes. 

“Okay.” says Susan. “Maybe I was. Some people believe in that sort of thing! It wouldn’t be a violation of the rules.”

“Some people believe in what?” asks John. Both Susan and the rat turn to look at him. 

“I am,” says John, hand over his heart, “and have always been, a shameless opportunist.”

SQUEAK says the rat. 

“He has a point, Mister Silver.” says Susan, gaze even. DO NOT TRY AND LIE TO DEATH. 

The voice sends shivers down his spine and raises every tiny hair on the back of his neck. 

“I suppose I won’t try that again.” says John. “Perhaps we can agree that I am frequently an opportunist?” 

Susan’s eyebrow creeps upward. The judgement is radiating off her. 

“I once was an opportunist.” says John, a sigh in the words that betrays his weariness. “And then I cared too much.” 

If you can’t show weakness before Death Herself, then you have no strength. 

“There we go.” says Susan. “That’s the truth.”

SQUEAK says the rat. 

“I’m not sure he knows that himself, yet.” says Susan. 

“If it’s about Flint -” says John. 

The rat manages to look excited. It should be perturbing, but rather it ends up being endearing. 

“Yes?” presses Susan. 

“I loved him.” says John. 

SQUEAK says the rat, triumphantly. It scampers down Susan’s arm until it is perched above the hourglass, and taps it twice with the scythe, pushing it towards turning over. 

“He doesn’t believe in that.” says Susan. 

SQUEAK says the rat, to John. 

“I don’t understand.” says John, a little helplessly.

“He wants to know if you believe in reincarnation. Returning to life.”

“I could.” says John.

SQUEAK says the rat.

“He wants to know if you believe in the possibility of being able to live your life again, so that you might rectify what you think was in error, to do better.”

John has a list of things he thinks were in error, a long fucking list of things that he wants to change, honed and perfected over thousands of sleepless nights. 

“I do.” says John, with certainty. He may not have believed while he was alive, but he certainly does now. 

SQUEAK says the rat, with finality, and taps the hourglass again. 

“It’s your funeral when Grandfather finds out.” Susan tells it. The rat shrugs. Susan turns over the hourglass. 

“Good luck, Mister Silver.” she says, and the world is thrown into a spin that leaves John staggering. 

Staggering, on two perfectly healthy legs. On a ship. In a cabin on a ship that has a bolted door. Currently inhabited by a very nervous looking man who John knows from experience has a page in his shirt that will make John very important to a very large number of people.

“What the fuck are you doing?” demands his new roommate. John attempts to take a step forward, misjudges where he needs to put his two whole and healthy feet, and falls flat on his face. 

“Fuck.” he says, into the planking. “Fucking fuck.” 

***

Managing to wrest the sword and the page from the cook takes more effort than it had the first time around, primarily because John was trying to remember how to move on two feet while he did it, but he does eventually succeed. The first time he’d done this - and wasn’t that quite the thing, that he’d done this before and was trying again - he’d waited until they broke the door down and then hoped for the best. But this time - this time he knows what the page is, he knows what it means - and he means to get it to Flint as soon as he can. If he gives it to Flint straight away, then perhaps some of the grand drama could be avoided. 

He’s going to need a better story than being the cook, then. 

There’s enough rope that he can tie his hands and tie himself to one of the posts in the middle of the room - a believable enough set of restraints for someone with too much information that they wanted to ensure didn’t fall into pirate hands, but with enough give that he could, indeed, have killed the man. He waits, in silence, until he hears the crew of the Walrus - his crew, still his crew, always his crew - start to try the door. Then he starts yelling, as loud as he can. Yelling for them to get him out, to help him, that he’s trapped. 

They break the door down faster than they did the time before, and Billy’s one of the first men in. 

John has to bite down on the instinct to attack him. To yell, and scream, and tear at his face with nothing but teeth and nails until it’s bloody and irreparable, left in the same state as Billy had left him and Flint, left him and Madi. But this Billy hasn’t done any of that yet. This Billy is young and idealistic, and believes in Flint, and has yet to have that faith broken by letters and falls and salt water on leather. This is a Billy who can be saved. 

“Thank God.” says John, exaggerating it just a little. “Would you cut me loose?” 

“You get pressed?” asks Billy. John remembers Billy’s story, remembers that he’d been in a situation like this. There’s a reason he chose this arrangement. 

“No.” John says. “I just know more than the captain might wish me to know.” 

He pauses, lets their expressions tell him where he should steer the story. 

“And I certainly have no loyalty to him.”

“You’ve got - information.” says Gates. John had almost forgotten him, in everything that had happened since. He wasn’t exactly a hard mark last time, so John keeps his lies simple - he tells the truth. 

“I’ve got information that my captain was concerned I’d be too willing to divulge to your captain.” he says. “And precisely because of that, I’m all the more keen to divulge it.” 

Gates gives him a considering look, and then nods a man forwards to cut John loose. 

Billy hauls him forward by the back of his shirt, hand fisted in the fabric. John would usually protest the rough treatment, but all he can think is that Flint will soon be there - he’ll be back in the same room as Flint, with a chance to fight back into the same position at his side that he’s always held. The name pounded through his head with every step they took - Flint, Flint, Flint, Flint, like a drumbeat for a marching corps, or a heartbeat. The door to the cabin on the Walrus opens and closes behind them, and John is treated to a long line of memories in this cabin, before Billy clears his throat and interrupts. 

“Captain?” he asks. There’s a grunt from the darkness of the corner where John remembers the bunk being.

“We found him in a locked room in the hold. He says he has information for you.”

And then there are footsteps, and Flint is stepping into the light. 

He’s wearing that fucking belt, the one that John used to take great delight in tearing off with his teeth, and his shirt is mostly open at the neck, giving John a fantastic view of the freckles he used to taste, used to use to play connect-the-dots and search through for constellations. His hair is still long, drawn back into the ponytail he’d worn it in before Miranda died. He looks - happier. Still weighed down by endless tragedy, but fewer tragedies and fewer chains to bind them than when John had watched him walk through those gates to Thomas Hamilton, to a life that might let him release those demons and be James McGraw again. 

“And what information is that?” asks Flint. There’s something in his eyes, some of the darkness that John knows dwells in his own, some of the same substance that had formed them both. 

“A page from the captain’s logbook.” says John. “Stolen first by our cook, and then by myself.” says John. “A page that contains the schedule for the Urca de Lima.”

Flint’s moving before John really has a chance to notice it, wrapping his hands around John’s throat and pushing him back - pushing him back and back and back until he hits the wall of the cabin and they are pressed together. 

“Why the fuck,” says James Flint, in a way John is altogether too familiar with, “would you think I’d be interested in that?”

“Well,” says John, because he’s got to start off by being an unrepentant little shit, “between my captain tying me up below and your little show here, I’d say I’m pretty sure my hunch was correct and you are interested.” 

“Because you want to see England burn”, he doesn’t say. “Because of Thomas Hamilton”, he doesn’t say. “Because you want a free and independant Nassau”, he doesn’t say. “Because you want justice”, he doesn’t say. He keeps the truths trapped behind his teeth and prays for the best. 

Flint huffs through his teeth, plainly frustrated. 

“Do you have it?” he asks. 

“It’s in the leather case in my jacket.” says John, and tries not to whimper at the feel of Flint’s hands on him again while Flint fetches the page out. 

“And you’d give it over so easily?” asks Flint. He’s still maybe six inches away from John, so close that John can feel the heat of his body through the fabric of their clothes. 

“I would.” says John. “I would very much like to be a part of your crew.” 

Flint looks at him, peers at his face, at his eyes. John wonders if he can see the darkness, if it would line up with his own in some fearful symmetry. 

“Alright then.” says Flint, and steps back. “What’s your name?”

“Silver.” says John, staring as intently as he could at Flint, hoping to commit him to memory, in case this life separated them. “John Silver.”

“Billy, it seems Mister Silver needs a bunk.” says Flint. “And I suggest you keep an eye on him, just to be safe.” 

***

They don’t find him a bunk. 

There isn’t enough room belowdecks to string up a hammock for John, so Billy ends up knocking shamefacedly on the door to Flint’s cabin after a span of maybe a half-hour. John finds himself shuffling his feet in a way he hadn’t done for years, rocking his weight back and forth and revelling in the lack of pain that accompanied such an action. He’s so caught up in the joy of it he misses the majority of the conversation happening between Billy and Flint. 

“No, there’s no need to disrupt the crew. And why should I make you keep an eye on him when I could?” Flint is saying, when John tunes back in. 

“As long as you’re sure, Captain.” says Billy, and John tries to force himself to stay still, to not let his mind drift back and back and back to all the memories he carries of being in this place, with Flint. 

“I’m sure Mister Silver and I will make it work.” says Flint, and grins, hard and sharp. It’s the same grin he’d given John when they’d caught a shark, the grin he saw after they stole a warship, the grin that came from victory against all odds.

John has gone to his knees for that grin before, and it’s taking everything he has to not go to his knees for it now. 

Not yet, he tells himself. Give it time. Give it time, and you can have him back, even if it’s just for a time, even if it’s just for a few moments. 

“Yes, Captain.” he says, and watches Flint’s face until it’s impossible for him to keep looking without getting punched. 

It’s a special kind of hell, living in such close quarters with Flint for the day it takes them to return to Nassau. It might not seem long, but without Flint’s trust, without the closeness that John was accustomed to having, it seemed like an eternity. Every time he was shunted out the door so Gates or Billy or both of them could discuss something with the captain felt akin to a punch to the stomach. John Silver had been many things in his first life, and he expected he would be many more in his second, but he had never been good at seeing what he wanted and not taking it. 

When they go ashore that first time - when Billy and Flint go to see Richard Guthrie, John busies himself getting as much information about the vote as he can, just so he knows. And when Flint and Billy return, after Singleton has called the vote, John’s waiting with a plan. 

He bursts into the cabin and slams the door closed behind him as soon as he sees Gates leave. 

“The fuck are you doing here?” demands Flint, standing over the wreckage of the table he’s flipped. John pauses for a moment, just observing, and then clears his throat to answer. 

“There’s a fix to this.” he says. “An easy one, too.” 

The look on Flint’s face is terrifying - the hope hidden behind the rage. 

“It would take me but a few seconds to plant the missing page on Singleton.” says John, and Flint looks - pleased?

“I was intending to place the blame for the page on Singleton to turn the crew.” he says. “Both Billy and Gates will know that it’s not the case.” 

“If I plant the actual page on him,” says John, “it won’t matter. They’ll be looking at the real page. They won’t assume any falsehoods.” 

“And what would you want in return?” asks Flint, justifiably concerned. “My ability to hold the captaincy would hinge on you not talking to anyone of your role in this ploy. You must want something in exchange for that silence.”

“As I told you before, I want nothing more than the chance to be one of your men and to earn my share of that treasure.” says John. He tries to keep his voice level, but regardless of the measure to which he succeeds, Flint knows something about it isn’t true. He stalks forward again, a predator after his prey, and John finds himself shuffling back until he’s pressed against the same patch of wall that he’d found himself against that first afternoon. 

“You’re lying.” says Flint, boxing him in. “You’re lying, and there is something you want.” 

There’s a humor in Flint’s eyes, a hint of mischief that John remembers from the few good days, back when their war was winnable, before betrayal and Billy and blood stole Flint away from him. Flint leans a little closer, and John can feel the blade Flint must have drawn during his advance pressed against the soft skin of his stomach. 

“What do you want, John Silver?” purrs Flint, right into John’s ear, and John might be a liar and a cheat and a con artist, but he’s also only human. He’s got James Flint back, boxing him in, pressing close to him in a way that makes John’s chest ache, and he’s asking what John wants. It’s an opportunity presented on a silver platter, and John may not be an opportunist, per se, but he knows what looking a gift horse in the mouth feels like and he has no desire to do so. 

John leans forward just enough, and presses his lips to Flint’s. 

There’s a moment, a hesitation between one beat of John’s heart and the next, where Flint is motionless and John wonders if he’s made a terrible mistake. And then his heart pounds once more and he can hear the sound of the knife falling to the cabin floor over the rush of blood in his ears and Flint’s pressing even closer to kiss him back, nipping and biting at John’s lips, and John can’t help but moan at the feel of it, can’t help but melt under the onslaught. 

“Well, then.” says Flint, when he pulls back. There’s a rather dangerous look in his eyes, something between delight and desire and determination. “That answers that question quite nicely.” 

John knows he must be quite the picture, between his undoubtedly heaving chest and assuredly blown-black eyes. 

“Captain,” John breathes. Flint sizes him up again. 

“Christ.” Flint says, scrubbing a hand over his face. “What am I doing?” 

“We’re going to end this fucking mutiny.” John tells him. “And then we’re going to come right back here and you’re going to fuck me over that desk.”

A slow, lazy, smile spreads across Flint’s face. 

“Giving orders now, are we?”

“Special occasions only.” says Silver, grinning. “I’m quite happy to follow yours, regularly.” 

“I should hope so.” Flint responds. “Considering I’m your captain. You meant it, when you said you wanted to be my man, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” says John, and it sounds like a pathetic prayer, even to his own ears. 

Flint leans close again, kisses John one more time. 

“Go.” he says, stepping back. “Plant that page. Let’s rid ourselves of interference.” 

John takes a few shaky steps forward. 

“Promise me,” he pleads, “that you will not let Singleton kill you.” 

Flint’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes. 

“Go, Mister Silver.” 

*** 

Planting the page on Singleton is easy - he looks mildly annoyed at John bumping into him, but brushes it off easily enough. John continues off to a nicely shadowed part of the deck, tucked up close to the captain’s cabin. He’ll have both a good vantage point for anything Flint does and an easy escape route if anything went wrong from there. Flint doesn't look at him when he emerges, but his shoulders are set in a grim line and his eyes are hard. 

“I'm sorry.” he starts, and John braces himself. John remembers this speech. He remembers being terrified the first time he saw Flint hold that log book up high, terrified for his own skin. Now he's just terrified for Flint, terrified he’ll miss just one parry and Singleton will split him open. Flint is still talking - still laying out what has happened, what will happen if they continue to support him as the captain. He tells them all about the prize they’ve been chasing, about the missing page, and he levels the accusation regarding the page stolen from his desk drawer at Singleton. 

John tears his gaze away from Flint in all his orating glory to gauge Billy and Gates’ reactions to Flint’s statement. They both seem horrified, and Billy’s eyes swing straight to John himself, already wondering if John set it up, if John is playing some bigger game. He widens his eyes at Billy as though the whole debacle is news to him too, and hopes that his fear regarding James isn’t too apparent in his expression. It wouldn’t do to give the game away so quickly. 

Singleton is denying that he’s a thief, and then Gates is laying out the options, and then the fight is beginning. John puts his hands flat on his thighs and squeezes, digs his fingers into the muscle until they’re ringed white, and prays, and prays, and watches, and prays. Flint is beautiful when he fights, something ancient wreathed in celestial terror, and John finds himself shaking as he watches. He knows he’s breathing hard and panicked when James has his hand wrapped around the blade of the sword, knows that he probably looks terrified, that anyone could tell, that the whole crew would know that John cared for Flint to a degree that could be so easily manipulated. 

And then suddenly Flint has the upper hand and the cannonball is coming down again and again and again and John finds himself gasping in time with each strike. There’s a certain kind of mania in Flint’s eyes that John had almost but never quite managed to forget in the time since he saw it last - that hyperfocus haunted John’s dreams, a ghost he’d never managed to shake. He wants to see it turned on him again - not with anger, as it had been the last time he faced off against Flint. Not with trepidation, as it had been before Flint walked through the gates of Oglethorpe’s plantation. No. He wants Flint to look at him like he is going to eat him whole, like he’s prey already running scared. He wants Flint to look at him like that, to strip his soul bare and leave him begging for more. 

Flint staggers to his feet, blood covering his face, eyes feral, and tells the crew exactly what they’re hunting. He tells them about the Urca, about the gold, about everything that they have been promised. 

John isn’t listening. John has slipped back into the Captain’s cabin, passing unnoticed amid the furor. John is leaning against the closed door, panting, dripping with sweat, shaking with want, mind still fixated on the look of Flint, blood-stained and bloody-minded, intact save for the slice on his palm. John is stripping out of his shirt and fetching the oil from the drawer in Flint’s desk, yanking off his trousers and draping himself over the chair so he can prop one leg on the desk and brace the other on the floor and get a finger into himself with the image of Flint, bloodsoaked and victorious, plastered all over the inside of his eyelids. 

They’ve done this before, glittering distant things hovering in John’s memory. Against houses and amongst trees, shirts sticky with blood so they cling to skin; a flighty partnering in a dance as old as time. John remembers every one of them, remembers the way Flint’s teeth sank into his bottom lip, the way he’d shake and gasp, the smirk on his lips when he was pulling John apart at the seams and he could keep himself distant, a victor crowned in red in place of laurels, enjoying the spoils of his conquest. It’s been so long - so many years since he watched Flint pass through those gates and out of reach - and he can’t believe it is going to happen again. He can hear the men chanting Flint’s name outside the cabin, and he sucks his lips between his teeth and works another finger alongside the first. 

It won’t be long now. 

John’s managed to get a third finger in and he’s rolling his hips down in little circles, shockingly aware of how heavy his breathing is and what a picture he must be making, and yet not even remotely ashamed about it. He supposes that feeling in particular had come from Flint himself, so really he had no reason to think to curb it. The only thing he’s going to have to consider curbing is the volume of the encounter - as much as John will enjoy it, he’d rather keep it from the crew. He’s got his head tipped back over the top of the chair and his eyes squeezed closed when he hears the door open. 

“Fuck.” says Flint, and John forces his head up and his eyes open so he can see what kind of reaction he’s engendered. 

Flint’s eyes are dark and he hasn’t paused to clean himself up - he looks like something from the depths of myth, some ancient demigod of war and conquest and victory. He’s focused entirely on John, that perfect, unwavering focus that had made him the leader he’d been, had made him a King’s Right Hand. A tiny part of John’s brain wonders if Hennessy knows what a brilliant mind, what a flawless tactician he has driven into the laps of England’s enemies, and hopes that the Admiral does. John wonders if this time around, there will come a day where he can watch the Admiral squirm in person. But those thoughts are for another time. Right now, he’s got the chance to seduce one of the loves of his life for a second time, and he’s not going to let it go to waste. 

John tilts his hips up, making sure it’s utterly unmistakable what his hands are occupied with, and tilts his head back just a little on a soft moan, making sure to leave the long stretch of his throat bare. 

“Fuck, you fucking -” Flint says, and cuts himself off from whatever he was going to say. 

“Do you,” pants John, and he only needs to exaggerate the breathiness a little, “have any idea how unbelievably attractive that was?”

Flint’s eyes manage to darken a little further. 

“You mean the part where I just killed a man.” says Flint, aiming for stern and landing in lustful. 

“Killed a man and twisted all the others around your finger so you’ve got them just where you want them.” says John. “Masterfully done.” 

The last is a tease more than anything else - he can’t help himself. Flint’s gaze is heavy enough he feels like he has to joke, just to keep his head above water. Rather than meet that gaze for any longer - rather than staring into Flint’s eyes and having to keep biting his tongue about what lay ahead for the two of them - John jerks the fingers he still has inside himself and moans again. Through half-lidded eyes, he can see Flint swaggering forwards, looking pleased.

“So desperate.” purrs Flint, and John finds himself nodding in agreement. “You watched me kill a man and all you could think to do was come back here and spread your legs for me?” 

Flint passes around the desk and comes to a stop. Standing between John and the desk, he makes the sprawl of John’s thighs seem all the more obscene, bloody face twisted into a lecherous smirk and bloody hands catching and stilling John’s wrist.

God, John loves him. 

“Do you want me to fuck you, then?” asks Flint, despite the fact he must know the answer. John nods, not sure he can trust his voice with Flint right there. 

Flint shoots him a look that is equal parts pleased and scolding and uses the hand not wrapped around John’s wrist to catch his chin.

“Use your words, Mister Silver,” he says, “you are so very good with them. Tell me what it is you want me to do.”

John gasps just a little, shivers running down his spine, and then swallows against the sudden dryness in his throat. 

“I want you to fuck me.” says John, feeling the words come alive on his tongue. “I want you to bend me over this desk and hold me down and fuck me until the only thing I remember is how to scream your name and beg for more.” 

I want you to forgive me for what I did, for what I haven’t done, he doesn’t say. 

Flint fucking growls, and the hand that had been holding John’s chin shifts to fist in John’s hair, dragging his head back. 

“I think,” says Flint, “I’d like to hear you start begging now.” 

“Please, Captain,” begs John. “Please.” 

Flint kisses him again, hard and fast, before he uses the hand in John’s hair to haul him to his feet and flip them so John is the one pressed against the table. There’s a heartbeat, two, in which they are just staring at each other, John adoring and Flint almost disbelieving, before Flint kisses him long and biting and passionate, and then turns John around and presses him flat against the desk with a hand in the middle of his back. John wraps his fingers around the far side of the surface, shuffles his legs as wide as they can go, and moans in the back of his throat as he listens for Flint undoing his trousers. 

“Do you have any idea how obscene you look?” Flint asks. “I walk in this door, and you’ve got three fingers in your ass and your legs spread so wide I could fit half this crew between them.” 

His hand cracks against John’s ass, and John lets out a gasp that turns into a keen, spine bowing as he tries to grind against the lip of the desk. 

“And now,” Flint continues, as though nothing has happened, “you’re arching your back and wriggling that perfect ass of yours and begging me to fuck you.” 

Another spank, another sharp whine forcing its way out of John’s mouth. Fuck, he’s missed this. 

“Quite the harlot, aren’t you, Mister Silver?” 

John arches his back as much as he can, canting his hips up.

“Only for you, Captain.” he says. It’s the truth, for now.

“You’d fucking better keep it that way.” hisses Flint, and if John were just playing him for money he’d be thrilled at having Flint by the balls, but as it is, with everything John knows and everything he hopes to achieve, he can’t help but feel an unspeakable lightness filling his chest. 

That lightness doesn’t fade away at the first press of Flint’s cock, it doesn’t fade when John’s moaning, long and drawn-out and continuous, it doesn’t fade when John shoves his hips back, impatient, and Flint laughs and wraps his hands around John’s waist. It doesn’t fade when Flint twines his fingers into John’s hair and pulls his head back and sinks his teeth into the muscle where John’s shoulder meets his neck, and then the back of his neck where they will vanish under the fall of John’s hair. 

It does fade, however, when Flint changes the angle of his hips, and John is fairly certain he just screamed in pleasure, his chest filling with something rolling and hot, the shallow sea on a hot day. 

“There we go.” says Flint, and does it again. 

Time stretches out after that, goes dragging and long like toffee. John’s not actually sure how long they stay like that, how long he spends clutching at the wood and shaking, but Flint’s hard, deep, thrusts have finally lost their rhythm and John’s getting to the point of shaking desperation. 

“Please,” he begs, without really knowing what he wants beyond more. “Please, please, please, please -”

Flint wraps an arm around John’s chest and hauls him upright. 

“Perfect.” he whispers into John’s ear. “You’re fucking perfect. God, can you hear yourself? Do you even know how much you’ve begged for me? How much you’ve moaned like a fucking whore?” 

John gasps, and makes another one of those particular moans, and writhes a little in Flint’s grip. Flint’s harsh breathing in his ear pushes him even closer to that edge, as does Flint’s other hand, which now has a loose grip on his cock. John lets his head roll back to rest on Flint’s shoulder, and wraps one arm around Flint’s neck. 

“Please,” he says again, and rolls his hips back into Flint and then up into his hand. 

“Go on then,” says Flint, and he tightens his grip. “Come for me.” 

John screams, because it’s the only way he can be sure he won’t say ‘James’. 

He slumps forwards after Flint’s wrung him out - braces himself on the desk and keens, feels Flint slide out of him after a few more punishing thrusts to come across the small of John’s back. 

Flint collapses down into his chair, finally exhausted, and John lets himself crumple to the planking, resting his forehead against Flint’s knee. Flint’s fingers twist back into his hair, and John braces himself for something - anything - but Flint just pulls him closer, so that John’s head can rest against his thigh, and starts stroking his fingers over John’ scalp. It feels - lovely. John sits, and lets himself be petted. 

“I think they heard you on the beach.” says Flint, at length. 

“Fuck.” says John, contemplatively, suddenly aware of the potential ramifications of what has just occurred. “So much for being subtle.”

Flint’s fingers still, and John looks up, only to find that Flint’s laughing - he’s got his eyes squeezed closed and his head tipped back just a little, and he’s laughing. It’s beautiful. John thinks that everything that has gone before was worth it - dying and returning and suffering, all of it was worth it, just to see James Flint laughing like this. 

“You’ll have to live with being utterly transparent in this one circumstance, Mister Silver.” says Flint. “I’m sure it will be difficult for someone as prone to obfuscating as yourself.”

“Fuck you.” says John, without thinking, and Flint laughs again. 

“Maybe if you’re very, very good.” he says, and goes back to petting John’s hair.

“What do we do, now?” John asks. 

“We’ll go get the gold.” says Flint. “And then we’ll figure it out from there.”

“What happens if the crew figures out we set him up?” asks John.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, Silver.” says Flint.

“Are we going to take a consort?” asks John, aware he's pushing his luck.

Flint tightens his grip on John’s hair and makes him look up.

“You’ve got a lot of questions.”

“I need to know so I can make contingency plans to keep covering your ass.” says John. 

Flint chuckles, and releases his grip.

There’s plenty of things John will have to worry about - he’s going to have an uphill battle trying to get the crew to follow him, now that they know he’s fucking Flint; they need a consort and he’d rather it be Vane than them having Vane as an enemy; there’s still the problem of Mrs Barlow and the letter she might still write - but for now, this is enough, James Flint, alive and not angry with John, is enough. 

The Walrus rocks on her mooring, and the sunlight streams in through the windows, and John Silver drifts into dozing with his head pillowed on Flint’s thigh.

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you who didn't recognise her, that was Susan Sto Helit and the Death of Rats of Discworld who made a cameo to send John back.


End file.
